Aguero & Co stopped from running too wild
Pre-match, Matt from the excellent "Lost Boyos" posted a question on Twitter regarding the match against Man City - it asked which two current PL records were set in matches between City and Swansea. The answer was 1) longest PL game [or more specifically the most added time] and 2) most shots saved by a goalkeeper [Vorm in the our first ever PL match]. It's the latter of the two records which was always most likely to be broken - City are in freewheeling form at home and with Negredo, Navas, Nasri & Aguero up top they're always liable to score three or four goals against any defence.
So it was, that when the match kicked off I was definitely in the "hopeful but hardly confident" camp. I assumed we'd be put to the sword and that we'd spend the entire match wildly clearing our ranks, and given City's prior form that wasn't a particularly negative viewpoint. More realistic than anything else - as I'd tweeted earlier today "hope for something, expect nothing".
In the first half, the Swans pinged it about well but we need to be making the most of our chances. At half time you could easily have argued the Swans had been the better side until that point, however goals win games and as long as we're shy in this department we'll struggle to break down stern opposition defences. City opened the scoring within ten minutes, but they'd fashioned chances much sooner than that. Less than a minute was on the clock when Tremmel saved from Aguero, before Negredo drew another stop from the German stopper with only five minutes gone.
The opener came in the 7th minute when Canas got the wrong side of Negredo, and clumsily climbed all over the back of him. Negredo got up to fire the resulting free-kick past a wrong-footed Tremmel, and the Swans had 83 minutes to weather a Man City storm. Or did they?
For the rest of the half, the Swans most definitely gave as good as they got. Shelvey drew two excellent saves from the City keeper and Alvaro scuffed a good opportunity, while City also spurned a few chances. The best opportunity of the first half was, however, fashioned and fluffed by Jonathan De Guzman. A lovely flick away from him man saw him clean through on Costel Pantilimon, but after seeming set to place a finish in the top right hand corner he contrived to lift it clean over the bar.
That was more or less the last moment of note in the first half, and the statistics you could pore through at the break paid testament to what we'd witnessed - Swansea's passing accuracy was 87.5% to Man City's 86.5%, while we'd also played almost 50% more passes (321 to 222). Possession too was massively in favour of the Swans - we remarkably had 58.7% of the possession heading in to half time - though that wasn't destined to last much longer.
The second half was much more as most neutral fans would have expected. By my count City had 16 shots (most of which were thankfully off target) to Swansea's 4 (all of which were sadly off target), and Nasri bagged himself two tidy goals. What was disappointing was how the centre of the midfield seemed to drop off in the second half, with Jose Canas in particular disappearing from view for large periods of time. Nasri's second goal, for example, saw the Frenchman advancing with Canas jogging casually back some ten yards behind him. It seemed to me that Nasri was very much "Canas's man", so why he wasn't making more effort there I don't know. I'm a big fan of the Spaniard, but he's got to do better than that.
Overall, the Swans did better than I thought they were going to, and if we'd have made the most of our first-half chances we could - and should - have been level at half time. As it was, we didn't take our chances and that allowed City the chance to regroup and come at us refreshed, which ultimately let to them extending their lead and securing the win.
The positive we should be taking from this game is that once again, we showed that by retaining possession in the centre of the park through neat tika-taka triangles we can defend by starving the opposition of possession. As Brendan and Bobby used to say, your opponent can't hurt you if they haven't got the ball. I thought that we looked at our best when we were knocking the ball around the centre of the field at pace, and Shelvey in particular was impressive (completing 72 passes at 93.1%). The more Jonjo plays like that the better, and on another day one of his two strikes would have found the corner of the net.
Whilst recording the EPL Round Table podcast this evening I predicted the Swans would win their next four games. Newcastle & Hull at home, before St Gallen & Norwich away. Confidence is everything, eh? It's entirely doable, and when we click as a team we play some excellent stuff - it's just about doing it on a more regular basis. How we go about doing that without our two main goalscorers is another matter though.
Jonjo Shelvey as a false nine, anyone?